Many industries rely on the use of elongated bars of some sort. As used herein, the term “long-bars” is a generic term to describe the general category of elongated elements, such as, but not limited to, rods, solid pipe, hollow pipe, structural members having various cross sectional shapes (e.g., I-beams, U-shapes, Z-shapes, M-shapes, W-shapes, channels, angles, tubes, flat-bars, and the like). Often these long-bars are made of metal, but the general term applies herein equally to those made of any material, including, for example, PVC, other thermoplastics, thermosets, wood, and so forth.
Typically long-bars are manufactured from raw materials and formed in various sizes, shapes, and lengths. These are then shipped to purchasers who use the long-bars for various tasks. Often, the purchasers have a need to handle the long-bars on numerous occasions, to move the long-bars on site from one location to another, to perform processes on the long-bars, and to then use the processed long-bars in, perhaps, new or modified products. The examples of the processes purchasers perform on the long-bars are numerous and commonly understood, and include, but are not limited to, shearing, bending, welding, cutting, threading, and the like. One particular form of long-bar commonly used in many industries is elongated steel rods used to reinforce concrete. These rods, or “rebar”, come in many diameters, typically measured in ⅛ inch increments and numbered generally with a reference that identifies the diameter (e.g., a #3 bar is ⅜″ diameter; a #4 bar is 4/8″ or ½″ diameter, and so forth). Manufacturers of rebar make the rebar in many lengths, up to and including 72 feet, but can cut the lengths to order in any desired length. Common lengths used by purchasers are 20 feet, 30 feet, and 40 feet, and so on. For the sake of simplicity herein, the specific examples described are shown for the use of steel rebar having already been cut to 20 feet length for feeding into a shearing or bending station, it being understood that the concepts involved are applicable to all forms of long-bar in any length, diameter, shape, and material for any handling or processing of the long-bar.
Currently in many industries it is both labor-intensive and space-intensive to store, handle, and move long-bars. Many industries use, simply, manual labor to do so, involving walking or driving a forklift, skid steer, or similar machine, to retrieve the desired long-bar size; lifting and carrying or transporting the bar to the desired location; and performing the desired further processing on the long-bar. Such manual handling methods are cumbersome, inefficient, uneconomical, and can actually be physically dangerous to the user, especially when large quantities are involved.
Some industries use large, complicated, hydraulic or pneumatic linear feed systems. These systems require a very large footprint and are expensive. They sometimes include conveyors, transfer arms, vibratory shakers, and robotic mechanisms. For certain functions, like descrambling long-bars that are in a jumbled mess, such complicated systems can provide some benefit. However, such systems do not maintain long-bars in categorized fashion and cannot selectively deliver to a user one or more desired long-bars. Moreover, such systems require that the long-bars move across the surfaces of those systems in a sliding manner, causing extreme wear from sliding frictional forces. This makes them susceptible to breakdowns and high maintenance costs.
What is needed is a machine that can simply and effectively hold one or more collections of long-bars and be capable of selectively delivering to a user, at the user's option, a desired one or more of the long-bars in each collection, enabling the desired long-bar to be removed from the machine, yet still retaining the other long-bars in the machine.